FNIH Leads a Portfolio of Tuberculosis Initiatives
Tuberculosis (TB) is the infectious disease responsible for the most deaths worldwide—1.5 million people died of TB in 2020—and one out of every four people globally is infected with TB. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions to the global TB response by overburdening health systems and compromising disease control capacity. In 2020, deaths from TB increased for the first time in a decade.
Starting in 2010, the FNIH has been at the forefront of TB research to improve prevention and treatment options, first with the HIT-TB and Shorten-TB projects, then with the launches of PredictTB and a TB vaccine program, and now with PAN-TB.
Tuberculosis Research Projects
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The Project to Accelerate New Treatments for Tuberculosis (PAN-TB) is a collaborative effort to identify and evaluate new drug regimens that are shorter in duration, easier to administer, and effective against both drug-sensitive and drug-resistant strains of TB.
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PredictTB is a five-year project to validate biomarkers that might identify patients with drug-sensitive TB and assess whether these patients are eligible for shorter treatments. Initial results are expected in January 2023.
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TB VACCINE
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Understanding the Mechanisms of Intravenous BCG-Induced Protection against TB in Nonhuman Primates (TB Vaccine) is a project to explore the efficacy of intravenous delivery of the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine, which is currently administered intradermally.
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Completed Projects
HIT-TB
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Identification of High-Quality Hits for Tuberculosis (HIT-TB) was a collaborative project that focused on identifying the small molecules that inhibit the growth of the bacteria that cause tuberculosis.
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SHORTEN-TB
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Developing Lead Compounds to Shorten the Duration of Tuberculosis (Shorten-TB) built on the lessons learned from HIT-TB to identify promising drug candidates that could shorten the duration of chemotherapy for all TB patients.
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